By Sara Jane

Feelings and sensations in your body, do you listen to them?

Do you understand what they are trying to tell you?

Yes your body and feelings do “speak” to you but we have to learn how to interpret the “way” they speak to us, as it is not in words or a language we can easily understand.

Suggestion, next time you have a feeling, a reaction to or about something that is happening or has happened, take time to sit with yourself and your feelings.

Listen to them, what are they trying to tell you, be open to the fact that it may not be what you immediately think.

Remember the mind is very good at twisting things to help keep us “safe” and by creating fear and worry it knows it can do that, keeping us confined in a box of its making.

It is about feeling the feelings, are they really what your first thoughts about them are or is it something else that gives them a completely different meaning?

Do those feelings also come with a sensation in your body that over the years you have interpreted in one way but could really mean something else.

Let me share an example from my own life to explain what I am suggesting:

A number of years ago I was given the opportunity to be on a national television program called The Weakest Link.

On the morning of the recording I was getting ready to leave home and fly up to Scotland for the filming and I felt what I thought was an unwelcome sensation in the pit of my stomach, a sensation I had for many years equated to fear.

And then a thought came to me, not really a memory but an understanding from my early years, the 3 months that I was hospitalised as a young child during which I only saw my parents once a week for an hour.

Every time I saw them, there was the anticipation, the excitement, that I was going to be taken home and instead I was left behind.

The feeling/sensation I was having was the same as that little girl who was let down on so many occasions and came to understand that that feeling was a fear of being left behind, left out, let down.

Now here I was as an adult going off to do something exciting and I had that same feeling, suddenly I understood that the mind had labelled the feeling as “fear” instead of anticipation or excitement.

I may not have won the program but I really do feel that I gained a bigger gift in understanding myself and at least one of the ways that my body communicates with me.

Sometimes it is about being “open” minded, looking back and finding a comparison in your early years so that you can understand as an adult what was happening and you can support your younger and older self to adjust your thinking or understanding of what may be happening in your life, giving you a different perspective.

Listen to the feelings coming from your heart and question the “feelings” coming from your mind.

Your heart will never lie to you, however, your mind is very good at twisting things, of misinterpreting them.

Always follow your heart, just don’t forget to take your brain with you ~ Brad Turnbull